Toro Rosso struggled with speed

Sochi wasn’t an easy race weekend for Scuderia Toro Rosso as its drivers only managed to score one point during the Russian Grand Prix, due to lack of speed on the circuit’s long straights and a bad qualifying session on Saturday.

Both cars made it to the end of the race but only Carlos Sainz managed to finish in points (P 10), while his team mate Daniil Kvyat saw the chequered flag on 12th.

Toro Rosso is confident that the upgrades planned for Barcelona will get the team back into the fight for the top positions of the midfield battle.

“What a tough race, especially as we were starting from behind because of the grid penalty", says Sainz.

"But today we got everything right: the start, the first lap, the pit-stop, the strategy… So we can be happy! We did a good race and recovered well from P14 to P10, which I think was the maximum we could do this weekend. After the pit-stop it was a bit of a lonely race for me and I just had to control the gap to Stroll, which we managed to do well.

"I must say that now I’m really looking forward to the next race in Barcelona –it’s a track where I’ve always performed very well and to race in front of my home crowd is always very special. I also have my own grandstand there, so a lot of people will be coming to support me and this will surely be one of the highlights of the weekend.”

Daniil Kvyat reckons he apologized to his team for criticising the strategy during the race, as he later understood their decisions.

“My start today wasn’t the best and I lost a bit of time there", Kvyat explained.

"During my pit-stop, we managed to get past Magnussen even though we then got undercut by Stroll and during my second stint I was unfortunately blue-flagged quite a lot and lost some more time having to let the leading cars by.

"I’d like to point out that my first comments after jumping out of the car this afternoon were maybe a bit too hard on the team – after having sat down with my engineers I understand why the team called me in a bit too early for my pit-stop: at the time, it was a very difficult call to make and nobody knew that the leading teams were going to stay out for so long. On a positive note, the last part of the race, in clean air, was fantastic – we were flying and the car felt great! We now need to bring what made the car so good into the next races.”